1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to medical care devices, and in particular to the field of physical therapy for accurate measurement of the partial weight placed on the foot, ankle, or leg.
2. Background of the Invention
Hospitals, convalescent homes, and even patient's homes are used for patient rehabilitation after medical operations and procedures. Patients that have had recent medical treatment involving a leg, hip, or foot need to be instructed on how much weight they can safely place on their leg while standing during their recuperation. The danger is that the patient is susceptible to prolonging the recovery period or re-injuring the affected leg, hip or foot if too much weight is placed on it. Usually, the medical doctor will specify what weight can be applied to the recuperating limb without risk of further injury. Many times, that information is passed on to a physical therapist, who is then responsible for properly supervising the patient's recovery. Part of that responsibility involves instructing the patient on how to avoid placing excessive weight on the affected limb.
The inherent danger of injury or re-injury lies in the fact that patients normally do not appreciate just how much pressure they apply to a leg simply by resting it on the ground, or applying what they think is just "a little" weight. Doctors usually instruct their patients to avoid applying more weight to the leg than a specified safe weight. When that specified weight is low, there is a high danger that the patient will put excessive weight on their leg without realizing it. This increases the risk of reinjuring the limb. It is therefore necessary for the medical worker to use a weighing scale to help patients teach themselves what the maximum safe weight "feels" like. The common method used today by health care workers is to instruct patients to step onto a weighing scale with their injured limb and apply weight on it until the maximum amount of allowable pressure is applied on the weighing scale readout.
For patients to effectively gauge the "feel" of the maximum safe weight that can be placed on their injured leg, they must step with their injured leg onto a weighing surface level with the adjacent surface that supports their other foot. Using a conventional weighing scale does not serve this purpose. Weighing scales have a significant thickness to them. Therefore, when a patient places his or her injured leg on the scale, the patient is really stepping up onto a higher surface. This process, therefore, gives the patient the "feel" of the desired weight when stepping up on a higher surface. It does not give the patient the "feel" of the desired weight when resting his or her foot on level ground. Fashioning a temporary adjacent step or support platform of equal height next to the weighing scale does not fully solve the problem because medical workers need a complete scale unit that they can take with them when they go from patient to patient. These workers travel from room to room or to the patient's home. This requires to bring the scale with them. There is a need for a portable scale that measures the weight applied by a patient onto his foot or leg without the patient having to step up to the weighing surface, and without a need for the medical worker to fashion a temporary step of near equal height every time he wants partial weight measured.
Another problem is that when a patient first uses a scale to measure partial weight, there is a tendency for the patient to initially step too hard on their leg and injure themselves. Reactions to weighing scale displays may not be fast enough. There is a need to give the patients quick stimulus to enable them to quickly remove excessive pressure when applied while using the partial weight bearing scale.